Snapchat For the Win

For the first time since Facebook unseated MySpace in the hearts and minds of teens, ladies and gentlemen, we have a new social media champion -- Snapchat, at least if you're a young American (cue David Bowie). While Facebook continues to dominate overall social media usage, in a new report from Edison Research, Snapchat has eclipsed Facebook with social media users aged 12-24. In fact, 72 percent of them now use Snapchat and 26 percent cited this as the channel they use most often, up from 15 percent just a year ago, a mind-blowing statistic. At the same time, Facebook dropped from 43 percent to 32 percent as the most-used network for that age group. This new report prompted a fascinating discussion with Tom Webster on our Marketing Companion podcast. We also discuss:

• Why this trend is another way consumers are becoming "less available" to advertisers.
• Why influencer marketing is growing in importance and how it is transforming in this ad-free era.
• Is Snapchat social media as it was meant to be? It's unencumbered by Likes, status and brands (for now).
• New data on podcasting and why Tom Webster now believes this should be considered a "mainstream" channel.
• Why the "short attention span" view is a myth.
• The enigma of radio -- receivers are disappearing but reach is holding steady.
• Content in the future -- might be unrecognizable from where we are today.

Are you ready to hear more? Of course you are. Let's get to it. Resources cited in this episode:

• Edison's Infinite Dial research
• Mark Schaefer's review of 2016 SXSW highlights

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Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty, the best weekly curation of digital news.

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